Why this client ended up in restraints at trial

When 20-year-old Dionte Lummus told an Ohio judge Monday that he wanted to fire the lawyer who is defending him in an attempted-murder trial, attorney Will Oswall said it wouldn’t be fair to his client to lose his counsel midtrial.

At that point, Lummus threw a punch toward Oswall’s face and tried to run out of the courtroom but was tackled by a sheriff’s deputy, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Judge Robert Ruehlman then held Lummus in contempt and sentenced him to six months before continuing with the original Hamilton County Common Pleas Court trial.

By the time jurors returned to the courtroom to continue hearing the case, Lummus was wearing handcuffs, leg irons and a waistband restraint. Oswall asked for an instruction that the jurors shouldn’t take the restraints into consideration, only the evidence.

The lawyer said he wasn’t hurt by the punch, which was a glancing blow. “I kind of saw it coming, so I stepped back,” he told the newspaper.